Thinking of Romania’s 34 years of democracy, and most probably its 25-30 years of a business environment based on healthy capitalism principles, we presume that 20 years of experience in the Romanian HR market make us relevant. Two decades of experience during which we, the people of the Edurom Group, have lived in various contexts, and from which we can extract a few useful principles.
We believe that we are capable to make a difference in the HR services market in Romania, through our work, at individual and team levels, applying solid principles and starting with the needs of our customers.
In this article, we chose to describe and apply the same principles that we practise in our work. We will not talk about how visions and strategies are implemented, about KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) achievement, or about success formulas, but about 5 of the principles we have learned in our over 20 years of experience together with our customers and their teams:
1. Keep your people, no matter the context
For us and our customers, the value of the crew was essential in each crisis, since the team and common objectives gave us the power to surpass all the difficult moments. No matter the context, we believe it is worth making efforts to maintain the team complete, or near being complete. We are confident that a performant team may be chosen to the detriment of short-term profit.
No matter the times, we have always wanted to evolve and develop our team. We kept our people close, and giving up on a colleague was the last solution implemented when it was necessary to reduce our costs. This approach we have chosen has generated reciprocity and our colleagues have chosen to stay with us; they trusted we could find together the power to adapt to any context.
2. Qualitative work has a domino effect
Performance can be described in various ways. From our perspective, it is defined by well-done work, a qualitative one. At first impression, it seems to be counterproductive, because it may be difficult to accomplish both quantity and quality. Yet, qualitative work, paired with patience, generates businesses that last. Even today, in the meetings with our clients and in our internal discussions, we debate how to obtain the optimal quality and quantity in a business, for a long-term impact, by taking into consideration all the opportunities and challenges of the moment.
How we applied this principle: we started with the training division in 2002, which generated future demands for HR services, from clients satisfied with what we initially delivered. Starting from here, we have created new divisions, specializing in IT recruitment, interim HR services in management roles, personnel leasing, and payroll. We turned the pandemic period to an opportunity to launch our project, “Eduromtech”, which offers know-how and practical resources for those who intend to develop their technological competency or plan to change their career and embrace a technical one.
3. Bring better and better people to your team
Our recruitment business has taught us the most valuable lessons about the impact extraordinary people can have on the companies they decide to work in. We have seen enterprises whose direction changed drastically – either positively or negatively – as an outcome of a few people.
In practice, we carefully analyse the people that we bring into our team. Besides the competencies, we evaluate their attitude, motivation, and curiosity level. We inquire about a person’s desire to bring an impact, to contribute to the result of the team, and business overall. Our recruitment process is complex and reflects the importance we offer to our team members that develop our lines of business.
Our clients’ questions regarding performance predictors for a future employee determined us to analyse not only our experience but also the research in the field, to create the profile of “good people”. We have a set of conclusions:
- the companies that succeed are continuously interested in the density of talents – what is the percentage of performant people compared to the total number of employees;
- we can consider three effective predictors for future employees’ performance in the “knowledge workers” area: willingness to learn, perseverance, and intellectual calibre.
We have also mirrored the attention on these aspects in the recruitment of IT specialists for our clients. We took them into consideration when we helped Software Development centres from the very beginning by hiring the first 10-50 specialists, as well as later, when they exceeded 100 employees. Moreover, we considered these performance predictors when we supported IT startups that have chosen the Romanian market, but also when we discovered the recruitment needs in an already formed team.
4. Invest in scientifically validated methodologies, with immediate effect, to ensure your people’s growth
We consider the Romanian expression “Theory as theory, but the practice is killing us” to be one of the most toxic beliefs in the Romanian business. Most probably, the intention of using this sentence was to decline the potential unnecessary theoretical knowledge from school. But from this to search just for “fast-food”, in terms of solutions for business problems, is a considerable difference.
We observe in our clients that excel an intense activity of understanding the working mechanisms of the markets, business dynamics, and basic information regarding human psycho-social behaviours. These customers invest in knowledge and scientifically validated models. Innovation has its roots in knowledge, theory, and research, even if it comes with exploration, failures, and lots of practice.
5. Invest your time in what brings the most value to your business and your customers
Based on what we observed, what the international companies do better than Romanian ones is focusing the resources in business areas that bring maximum value. What brings value to a business is in dynamics, therefore we have to pay attention to changes.
In 20 years of activity, we have seen clients who externalize their non-critical services, to then internalize them when the market trends have changed. Probably, the best example is the IT departments of 15-20 years ago, because at that time IT was a support function. Today, when businesses’ digital capacities have become a critical success factor in the industry, we observe organizations building teams and own companies that take care of this area of their business.
Allocate important resources to areas that bring the most value to your customers and, directly, to your business; and, why not, externalize what now is non-critical and other businesses might get it very well done for you.
We do not pretend that the five principles above are the only ones important to consider. We know from practice that the management of businesses and of their teams might have its own unknown situations. And you can see the results after going through a long road that, besides models or systems, offers you lots of challenges to pass and lots of failures to learn from.
We hope some of these principles have validated something that you already knew or practice; at least one or two statements to determine you to rethink certain aspects, or even to challenge you. And, even if the principles we presented might seem simple, we encourage you to reflect on how they can be implemented in your teams.
If you want to have a specific discussion regarding training, management consultancy, IT recruitment, or executive research, let us know here.
The Edurom Team
The EDUROM Group celebrates over 20 years of activity in the Romanian Full HR Services market. We have distinguished ourselves by providing world-class training methodologies, talent recruitment expertise, executive search, and tailoured consultancy solutions; through them, we assist leaders, teams, and individuals from multiple industries to achieve outstanding results.
Our first 20 years in numbers: we have collaborated with over 300 international, national, and local customers, delivered so far 3.000+ days of training, worked with 100.000+ candidates, from which 20.000 were from the IT industry, and offered 40.000+ days of consultancy.
Four powerful international methodologies, scientifically validated, are present in Romania through us: Situational Leadership®, BELBIN®, Whole Brain® Thinking, and EQ-i2.0®. These offer customized solutions for specific problems, and they are instruments that can be complementary in practice.
